The Heart Falls All Over Again in New York City
by Word Works
Summary: Robert Crawley goes to NYC by Martha's request to support Harold during his US Senate Committee hearing. Robert stays with his wife's family and found himself sleeping in Cora's old bedroom among her old things. Robert got re-acquainted with the young Cora he did not meet and found himself even more in love with his wife.


The Heart Falls All Over Again in New York

Disclaimer: This work is a piece of fan fiction based on characters and a storyline (between Episode 7 & 8 of Season 4) written by Julian Fellowes for Downton Abbey. All rights are reserved to the rightful creator.

Synopsis: A modern AU. Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham, goes to New York City by Martha Levinson's request to show solidarity and support for his brother-in-law Harold who was summoned before a US Senate Committee. Robert stays with his wife's family throughout the duration of Harold's hearing and found himself sleeping in Cora's old bedroom and among the things she owned from before they met and got married. Robert got re-acquainted with the younger love of his life, the one he never had the pleasure of meeting, and found himself even more in love with Cora.

A gust of wind, saltier and warmer, rose from the Lower Bay and headed east, crawling over Brooklyn and breaking into a zephyr as it collided with the formidable New York City sky scrapers until it was no more than a slight breeze upon reaching Upper Manhattan, heralding summer. Skirting the New York City skyline is a seven o' clock sun ready to bid the day goodbye glinting like topaz under lamplight every time it hits the top edge of a tall building, leaving streaks of cyan, orange, and magenta in the skies. In the streets, the hustle of people and cars stirred the smog blanketing all the bustles in a thin veil of dust.

On the third floor of an elegant brownstone townhouse so defined by its Tudor Revival architecture in the Upper West Side, Robert with his characteristic dignified poise stood by the window watching the distant scenes with great interest, his left hand parting and holding the drapes in place.

He has been to New York City numerous times, more than he could count with his fingers, on his own, or with his family, or with just his wife who feels the need to see the city of her youth every year in order to spend time with her mother and brother and reconnect with her friends. Yet, New York City never ceased to bring out a mixed emotion in him—its libertine spirit; the multicultural atmosphere; its densely populated boroughs; how people could bump into each other not knowing who they are, where they come from, where they are headed. These fascinated him no end.

He is not totally alien to the megacity life having lived in London himself but New York is something else: more modern, faster, grittier, louder, and a little confining...contemplating all these never cease to make him feel out of his element.

It is a far cry from his life back home—the expansive estate in the northern part of Yorkshire, England with its gently sloping hills dotted by tree breakers, stock farms, quaint cottages, and plots of wild flowers. At the heart of it is a castle known for its Jacobethan style—Downton Abbey—where he was born and spent most of his adult life building a family to nurse and protect the traditions, ideals, and honour that this house of a long line of Earls of Grantham stands for; where he is geographically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually rooted; and where Cora, his wife of 33 years, in whose absence his heart could never be whole, lives and awaits for his return.

Remembering Cora made Robert feel a sudden stab of pain in the heart. The pain of missing—missing as in a deep longing for that special someone; missing as in feeling someone's palpable absence in that space beside him where she often occupies.

"_How I wish Cora is here with me_," he said to himself.

How he wished this trip was not so sudden so that Cora was able to plan her schedule and come with him. But two weeks ago, Robert left England in a huff and boarded the earliest flight to New York upon Martha's summon.

Robert mentally corrected himself. "_No, it was more of a plea than a summon_."

Cora was unable to travel with him because she has to manage the opening of an art exhibition by a group of local young artists that she curated herself.

Two weeks ago, they were in deep slumber-he was laying on his back softly snoring while his wife was resting on her side facing him, her left arm wrapped around his waist—when Cora's phone by the bedside table rang. "_No, screeched like a banshee in the middle of the night_," it seemed more to Robert.

"_What the hell_!" Robert exclaimed as he sat up disoriented at first.

Cora scrambled out of bed in half sleep half-panic state to answer her mother and that was when he heard Martha's desperate voice from the other line asking to talk to him. Cora handed him her phone, the expression on her face pleading for some understanding from his end. It turns out Martha was standing under an afternoon sun in Central Park from across the pond talking to him while he and Cora were seated on their bed in their silk pyjamas and droopy eyelids.

Harold, his brother-in-law and Cora's only sibling, had to face a US senate committee over Levinson Holdings' alleged association with another company which got embroiled in a controversial deal for oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

A day after, Robert found himself standing in the foyer of the Levinson townhouse removing his tweed navy blue coat; not in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel where the Levinsons owned a small share and where he would have wanted to stay in peace throughout his whole New York visit.

Martha, different sorts of gold and diamond studded bangles jingling in her hands, came half-running from the living room to welcome him with a peck on his left cheek while briefly wrapping her arms around him. Cora's mother has always been known for her over-the-top fashion sense. French women would tell you that to be chic one has to accessorize minimally but Martha does not care for all that. She wears her wealth whenever and wherever she wants with no apologies. Robert wonders, at times, how this woman could have given birth to Cora—subtle, simple yet elegant, the exact opposite of her mother.

"Welcome to New York, Robert," exclaimed Martha in her characteristic flourish. "How's the flight?"

"Oh, just a slight turbulence and nothing more."

"Don't get me talking about turbulence. Last November I went on a tri-country tour in Southeast Asia with some friends and the northern monsoon was terrible. The whole flight felt like riding a Ferris wheel in windy Chicago! Still, I am coming back in the summer to check those white Philippine beaches. You should let Cora come with me, she'd love that, you know."

Robert chuckled in response. What amazes him about American humour is the Americans' capacity to make fun of themselves and still maintain a healthy amount of self-dignity. It is something you rarely see among the English, or at least those within his social circle. They would not be caught dead looking foolish in public. Cora still has that sense of humour despite years of living in his country. She can laugh at her own gaffe which would have killed him in mortification had it otherwise happened to him. Whenever she turns that way, he would tease her by commenting "_One more year, darling, and you'll be turning into your full Martha mode_" to which she would respond with an eye-roll.

"Fancy some sandwiches or a cup of tea to settle your nerves? Elena has prepared them for you," Martha distracted him from his short reverie.

Elena is the Levinsons' 58 year old trusty Filipino cook who can whip up delicious French, Spanish, Mediterranean, Chinese cuisines, you name it, and whose quiet demeanour is as pronounced as the bravado of their very own Mrs. Patmore.

"Oh, thank you, Martha, but I had a full luncheon in the plane and I am still feeling a bit full. Could you please tell Elena to reserve it for later?"

"Then you should be resting. I shouldn't tire you anymore with tales of an old woman's misadventures," winked Martha. "You know where to find the biggest guest room, Robert."

The biggest guestroom has been Cora and his designated bedroom whenever they found themselves staying in the townhouse instead of in a hotel or with her mother in the Levinson house in the Hamptons or in the mansion in New Port. The Levinsons invested in real estate and their properties are scattered around New York and Rhode Island, not to mention the rambling house in the outskirts of Cincinnati where Cora and Harold spent their childhood and that the family managed to keep. They even own a penthouse in the East Side of Manhattan but Harold has been staying there for years making it his home.

But a thought struck Robert. "Oh, thank you Martha but if you don't mind, can I stay in Cora's old room instead?"

"In Cora's?! Nonsense! It is smaller, though it has a good view of Central Park, and it has never been slept in since she married you and the mattress hasn't been aired for months!"

"I don't mind a cramped space, really. Besides, there is only me so I would need a smaller bed." He would have wanted to add "_I want to stay closer to the things that belong to Cora just in case I begin to miss her in the next two to three weeks that I'm here_." But he kept this to himself. Martha is as pragmatic as his son and Robert did not want her to think that he is a sentimental fellow though deep inside he is and his wife never failed to tease him for that.

"Alright. If you say so."

He was in the middle of the stairs when Martha called, "And Robert, you can have your dinner any time you want. But if you wish to join me do please come down at six. I am in this new six o'clock diet, Robert, so I do not eat beyond that."

Robert, polite and ever gracious, chuckled and turned to her mother-in-law with a compliment. "You don't need to be on a diet." Then, he went up and proceeded to Cora's bedroom.

On his first night in New York, Robert had trouble getting to sleep hours after joining Martha at dinner and calling Cora back home. His body needed time to adjust to the different time zone. Worse, the buzz of New York City was throbbing in his ear and, to be honest, 33 years of married life and he is not used to sleeping on his own anymore. So, he got up and looked around the room. Cora's room is well preserved. He has never been in her room except for a short tour that she gave him at the start of their marriage. In the low light of his bedside lamp, he could make out the dainty pale pink and lilac patterns on a white background, now slightly yellow with age, of the once expensive paisley wallpaper. Padding his way across the room, he stood face to face with a tall bookcase housing Cora's books as a teenager in the 80's. The lower shelves were filled with neatly arranged classics, mostly works from the English Romantic period published by Penguin and Signet. There was a healthy sprinkling of American Literature—Faulkner, Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, among others. In the middle shelves were modern literature from across the world—plenty of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, there was a collection of poems by Neruda, Asian, Latin American, and African Literature. A whole shelf was devoted to great works in Philosophy, art theory, and art criticism.

"_Her college readings perhaps_," Robert whispered to himself. Cora graduated with a BA in Art History with Latin Honors from Yale.

On the top shelves are neatly arranged stacks of Nancy Drew novels and of Archie and Marvel Comics. His wife is a very well-read person and, by the looks of it, has quite a strong and eclectic literary foundation.

Beside the book case is a smaller cabinet containing Cora's collection of cassette tapes from the 70's and 80's vibrant music era. There was a complete collection of Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel..."_Beautiful song writing there_," Robert observed...Joni Mitchell, and Aretha Franklin. There were albums by Nina Simone, David Buckley, Leonard Cohen, Maxime LeForrestier, Cat Stevens, Moody Blues and a lot more. Cora has an extensive collection of 80's rock music like Heart's, Duran Duran, and of new wave music. She even has one of those early Madonna album, which he thought she would not have listened to but apparently she did, alongside that of Cindy Lauper. The lower shelves were empty.

Robert looked to his right and saw an antique armoire under a painting of a Midwestern prairie by an Ohio artist which, as his wife told him many years ago, they brought with them to New York from Cincinnati to remind her of her childhood home. He smiled to himself remembering that. Cora is also sentimental at heart.

He tried the drawers of the armoire and was pleased to discover that they were not locked. He was eager to riffle through the contents of the drawer but momentarily stopped himself, debating whether it is a good idea to do so.

He and Cora, though they shared their lives together for more than three decades, still manage to keep small spaces of their lives from each other. Both of them agreed that it is important in a union to maintain these spaces that are separate from their married life so that whole and strong in their personal identity and growth they can come back to each other as two complete individuals with more than 100% of themselves to give to the marriage.

Cora knew of Robert's relationships and romantic adventures while in Oxford and even after that but not the full extent except those which he freely disclosed to her. She knew that when he was 19 he fell madly in love with a 20 year old chemistry student at Sommerville College in Oxford. She knew that he spent many evenings with her in an Inn just outside of Oxbridge. But Cora did not know that one night in the Michaelmas of 1980 that young woman came knocking at his Hall shivering not with cold but with fright to tell him she missed her period while he held on dearly and clawed at the door jamb, scenes of confrontation with Violet flashing through his mind like a slideshow, that if the maintenance at Oxford does not only repaint the building every five years he is certain you could still find the marks on the wood where his fingernails had dug in.

Cora does not know that on a train ride to Prague from France after his graduation, anonymous and, therefore, free from the constraints of his conservative upbringing, he flirted shamelessly with a stunning Italian in the opposite aisle and spent the whole week touring the city with her. Cora only knew that he made a trip to Prague as a graduation trip from his parents and made friends with some people there.

In the same manner, he does not know more of Cora's past before he came into her life except for what she freely told him, or for what came out of Martha's and Harold's mouth after a few shots of tequila or vodka. In fairness, Cora judiciously told him many things about her. In the early years of their marriage she brought him to Cincinnati and took him to the prairies where she spent a good many afternoons sketching or to the trails that she and her father used to take in the autumn when she was a child. She introduced him to her friends in New York, to the museums and art galleries where she usually hang out. She told him she got engaged at 20 to a son of his father's business associate but called it off because as he became too pressured to excel in everything he does he found himself near the breaking point and strayed with another girl if only to regain a semblance of control in his life. Robert knew it burned her. She told him she went backpacking around Asia and Latin America in her youth for a taste of adventure but Robert knew the reason why: Cora wanted to hide, to get away and forget.

Robert did not mean to pry. Yet, there were those times when he wished he could have shared her early life. In a party in her mother's place in the Hamptons in the mid 90's, Robert found himself in the midst of friends of Cora's regaling him with stories of Cora confronting a man who made a racist comment in the subway, of Cora marching for women's rights, of Cora volunteering in a public education program on HIV/AIDS in San Francisco, and of Cora dating someone whose name you can read in the society pages of New York. He was jealous, jealous that she dated someone else, jealous that it is only them, her friends, who witnessed all of these and not him. When it comes to looking at Cora's past through the eyes of her friends, he feels completely an out group though Cora, upon seeing this, reached out and worked harder to banish that from his thought. At times wrapping her arms tightly around his neck, peppering him with kisses, and most of all just loving him with all her heart.

One of his deepest desires is to have met Cora before their fathers introduced them to each other...well, kind of pushed them to each other as a form of a strategic business merger...in one of those function rooms of the Empire State Building in 1984. He in black tie; she in a formal black dress.

Sleeping in Cora's room for the first time and looking at her music albums and books has somehow filled in the gap years for him but he wanted more, he wanted to know more of Cora's, of her youth. So, he found himself opening the top left drawer of the armoire. Robert saw a neat stack of boxes of unused Christmas and Birthday cards inside. There were also unused postcards of Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Lisbon, and other cities where she traveled extensively. Deep inside is a stack of unused stationaries in different designs and colours and of envelopes in varied sizes. Cora is one to write letters to loved ones. She uses her E-mail these days and keeps a private Instagram account for the benefit of her family but every time she finds the opportunity to do so, she would always write letters on specially monogrammed linen paper and send them through the post.

There was a box of Parker pens. "_Hm, the ink must have all dried up_," Robert quipped.

He marvelled at how neatly they are stacked at each other, it is as if she had just arranged them yesterday. Cora is very organized. She always manage to straighten things and place them in their proper corner. Back in Yorkshire, she kept separate filers for birth certificates and copies of their marriage contract, children's report cards, baby records, copies of real estate titles, among others.

Cora kept her trinkets in boxes and porcelain bowls in another drawer. One bowl was filled with loose buttons. In a lidded ceramic box, Cora kept her brooches and pins. In yet another box were her hair clips. Robert picked up a thin hair pin decorated with three white sapphire stones and smiled. Cora has always preferred dainty designs studded with sparkling stones. Even now, the hair clips she wore to parties and invitations bear a close resemblance to this particular pin.

In the bottom left drawer Robert found one of the biggest surprises in his life: some of Cora's unfinished needlework. There was an unfinished embroidery job of a butterfly hovering a bouquet of pink roses, an unfinished cross stitch project of a ballerina in pale peach pointé shoes, and a powder blue handkerchief monogrammed with CL in an elegant stroke that she had not finished edging. Robert, once again, finds himself thinking of Cora's deft hands doing embroidery in her spare time under the bright light of their family sitting room at Downton. Wrapped in tissue paper are spools of satin threads in different colours. Robert took a mental note to take few of those skeins to England and give them to Cora. She would be happy.

The topmost right drawer was empty. The next drawer was full of old albums of Cora. Excitedly, Robert took the one on top. He had seen old pictures of Cora, she brought some of it to England and a bust shot of her younger self even graced his working desk in the mini Library at Downton and on one of those side tables at Grantham House in London. He turned page by page to look at pictures of Cora from baby to early adult with a loving and admiring expression on his face. Cora may have had Martha's pale complexion and startling blue eyes but their shape and her eyebrows she got from her father. She has her father's luxurious dark hair, height, and lean frame, too!

"_Thank God_!" Robert exclaimed into the room.

Finally, Robert's eyes locked upon a middle shot of Cora, hair in the trendy telephone wire style of the 80's framing her face while she was slightly looking up before the camera. Her deep blue eyes caught the beautiful light of autumn. She was wearing a padded blue chambray shirt matched by a thick and fluffy pale yellow scarf flapping around her neck and shoulders. Her lips in half smile. He has not seen this before.

"_This must be in Yale...she is very beautiful even then_!"

Reflexively, Robert drew his free hand to massage his chest. He was starting to get breathless as he marvelled at the beauty before him. She was already beautiful in her youth and it pained him that he was not yet there to see it, to hear her voice, to feel even just her quiet presence. Robert choked back tears but not before a single drop rolled down his cheek and landed on his blue silk pyjama shirt. Ever more carefully, he took the picture from its pocket, shut the album close, and put it back into the drawer.

Few moments after, Robert stood by the window watching the twinkling lights and the incredible New York skyline from a distance but all he saw from the other side of the closed glass window is a young woman with a massive crown of dark ringlets smiling at him with the spectacular colours of the Eastern autumn in the background. Slowly, the young woman he so wanted to have met materialized in his mind from the other side of the mirror obliterating his view of the distant lights and of the city which he always associated her for.

Robert smiled and drew a deep sigh and headed to bed. He was never more in love!

For the second time, a gust of wind rose from the Lower Bay and crawled over Brooklyn climbing Upper Manhattan sending into a flutter the early buds of the cherry blossom just outside the window where Robert stood by. Robert turned his head as if to make sure that the brown Manila envelope which he placed on top of the bed minutes ago is still there. It contained Cora's unfinished monogrammed handkerchief, a sample of some of her silk threads, and that lovely picture of her. He would give all of it to her upon his return once they are alone.

Robert glanced back to the view before him. Dusk is gathering around the edges of the sky. Tomorrow he is flying home, "First class!" as Martha insisted, courtesy of his wife's family. He felt like he did not achieve much helping Harold. Why he has to be around in those two weeks of hearing, at first, beats him. Harold has a formidable legal team from Wall Street so Robert's legal background in Corporate and Investment Law that has gotten a little rusty upon his settlement in Yorkshire was rarely needed. Sometimes it seemed to him that his presence is superfluous and his travel a waste of time.

Only yesterday, as he sat through Harold's last hearing when, before delivering his deposition to the committee, his brother-in-law glanced at him seeking for affirmation; only yesterday, when, as Harold wrapped up his deposition, Martha glanced and nodded at him with a look of gratitude in her eyes as she draw a sigh of relief that the whole debacle is almost over; only then that he fully understood the meaning of his presence: love and moral support of a family member.

He has never been good at open displays of affection but, in that moment, those times in the past when Harold got into his nerves for his amoral business sense and pragmatic values; for demanding him to attend social functions that alienated him no end; for forcing him to fraternize with some doofus in the bar over rounds of alcohol that earned him heavy hung overs and Cora's ire, cold shoulder, and deadly glare...why, they seem to dissipate at the thought of how this man who speaks in a different accent and is overly gregarious with younger women could actually be convinced that he, Robert, the current Earl of Grantham, reserved and refined, is truly a family. Those times he put up with Harold, and Martha even, when he should have been in bed putting his feet up and the two weeks he spent patiently, at times grudgingly, in Harold's hearing, Robert is doing them all for that young woman looking up before the camera that one spring time in Massachusetts and for the 54 year old woman in damp Yorkshire who held up and is still holding up half his sky. By doing all these he felt like he had met that young woman after all.

Robert was startled by a snappy knock on the door followed by a sharp turn of the knob. He turned to see Harold standing by the door in his cream dinner jacket smiling at him.

"Aren't you joining us for dinner, Robert?"

"Of course, I am!" Robert paced towards the door smiling, his heart in a flutter as the third gust of wind blowing from the Lower Bay smothered Brooklyn and caressed Uptown Manhattan with a gentle wisp.


End file.
